Innocence Lost is Never Pretty

“Perhaps straight, attractive, single women with an unfulfilled desire for marriage are an awkward reminder that all is not right with the world.” Connally Gilliam

Since I read this line in an article today, I have been amply reminded that all is not right with the world. And it makes me angry. There is nothing more sickening to me than to see innocence lost.

In the news today, at least three young Amish girls were shot execution style in their classroom. They have gone on to their eternal reward, but what of the rest of the girls, what of their brothers who could do nothing to protect their sisters and friends? A culture that believes in peace and is void of most any kind of violence has been thrust into a world we all see each night on the news but it hardly ever touches us. If anything our own hearts are so hardened to the evil in the world; we are not moved. Now our local Amish community is more than moved…Its innocence is ravaged.

As if that wasn’t enough, I watched a movie tonight called Water its about a Hindu Indian girl that becomes a widow at age 8. (Don’t even get me started on the ridiculousness of children getting married.) She is forced to live a life of poverty with other widows. She is cannot live with her family and she can never remarry. The pretty ones get prostituted out to help support the older ones. The movie takes place in the 1930s but the closing credits said as of the 2001 census there are as many as 34 million widows in India that are still treated with such abject disgust and under these absurd requirements, where as the Bible says to take care of the widows this Hindu culture does not.

I feel as though everyday I question God’s plan for my life. It’s like losing my innocence all over again. As if the knowledge that my anticipated baby brother wouldn’t ever come home was not enough. As if the realization that not all family members can be trusted was not enough. As if one man’s manipulation of my good judgment, so carefully instilled by others and cultivated by myself, was not enough. No, each day I have to harbor bitterness over innocence lost and lose just a little bit more of what’s left.

So I stood in the shower and wept. I wept for the Amish community scarred for life by a heinous act. I wept for the Hindu widows whose religion keeps them in bondage. I wept for myself because I think too much about what I don’t have and not enough about those who have far less.
And yet at end of the day, I will crawl into bed fully knowing that I am not an Amish mother who just lost her daughter, nor am I a Hindu widow who was too young to even remember her husband and now is old enough to want one and can never have one. I’ll lie in bed and think on the fact that I am “straight, attractive, single woman with an unfulfilled desire for marriage.” I am my own awkward reminder that all is not right with the world – especially my own.

I feel sort of helpless to the fact innocence is falling to pieces all around me -a sure outcome of a world that is not right. And the one thing I can do, which is protect what little innocence and childlike faith I have left from embittered-ness is such a tall task in my eyes. It almost seems easier to go to India and free the widows.